Ahead of celebrating 10 years of Athena Swan in Ireland, we’re sharing case studies of good practice from Athena Swan awardees. Here, Stephen Gordon and Cliona Skelly reflect on UCD's School of Veterinary Medicine's approach to, and the impact of, undertaking the Athena Swan Ireland programme.
Overview
A key priority for the UCD School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) Athena SWAN Bronze action plan was to increase the percentage of female academics at higher academic grades via a mentoring programme and increased awareness of the UCD promotion system. This strategy from 2019-2023 resulted in increasing the percentage of female professors from 50% to 57% and full professors from 14% to 30%, including the first promotion of a female professor to full professor via the UCD promotion pathway.
Purpose of the initiative
Before the implementation of the SVM Bronze Action Plan, (i) there was an underrepresentation of females at higher academic grades, especially at full professor, with (ii) no female having applied for a promotion to professor since 2016, while no female had ever applied for a promotion to full professor.
Furthermore, (iii) clinical academic staff with heavy clinical commitment were not applying for promotion, and (iv) the overall rate of application for promotion by all academics across SVM was low. To address the gender imbalance in academic posts and promotion pathways, our Bronze Action plan implemented two core action areas, (a) establishing mentoring programmes across all staff, and (b) raising awareness of the faculty promotion policy through workshops.
The initiative
In November 2019, SVM established a voluntary, in-house faculty mentorship programme, prior to any such programme being available to the wider UCD community. In the first cycle, nine mentors (four females and five males) undertook bespoke training, and 12 mentees (10 females and two males) entered the programme.
The initial scope was to run this scheme for 12 months; however, due to the COVID pandemic, it was extended for a further year. A feedback session was held at end of first mentoring cycle (December 2021), facilitated by UCD HR. Feedback was positive, and all mentees agreed it was a worthwhile experience.
From 2019 to 2022, 21 SVM staff took training in being a mentor (13 females/eight males), and 31 as mentees (29 females/two males). In conjunction with mentoring, a series of promotion workshops were held (online due to COVID). An SVM faculty member who was a former member of the Faculty Promotions Committee hosted these workshops in July 2020, providing an overview and guidance on the application process. Workshops targeting each promotion bracket were then held; promotion to associate professor (July 2020), to professor (August 2020) and to full professor (September 2020).
In addition, a workshop for clinical staff was held (2020) facilitated by the UCD Registrar and attended by the College Principal and Head of School. Staff were also encouraged to attend UCD promotion workshops (from 2019-2022, 20 staff attended these workshops: 11 females, nine males).
Rationale
SVM had experience in the development and implementation of mentoring programmes for students and had seen the benefit of such programmes for new students and graduates. For example, peer mentoring of 1st year veterinary students by senior students helps them get to grips with the new environment and challenges of university life.
Meanwhile, at the end of the UCD journey, new veterinary graduates can receive mentorship from veterinarians who themselves graduated in the last 5 years, helping them with the transition from university to professional life. Hence, the staff mentoring programme was seen as a natural extension of such programmes, with the initial focus on academic staff and career progression.
Results
Since the roll out of the mentoring and promotion workshops, 17 faculty applied for promotion since from 2020 to 2023 (11 female/six male), 14 of whom were successful (nine female/five male), including the first promotion of a female Professor to Full Professor via the UCD promotion pathway.
To put this in context, prior to this in SVM no female had applied to be promoted to Professor since 2016 and no female had ever applied for promotion to Full Professor. Of 6 promotions from lecturer/assistant professor to associate professor (four female/ two male), three female applicants had major clinical commitments, which speaks to the impact of mentoring in supporting these staff through the process.
Furthermore, lobbying from the School led to increased recognition of clinical work in the revised UCD Promotion Framework. The level of promotion of female staff has begun to redress previous underrepresentation, and SVM currently has a greater % of female faculty at the higher levels of full professor/ professor when benchmarked against other Irish universities in the area of STEM education.
Key barriers and facilitators
Facilitators:
• Staff engagement with the mentoring initiative, both as mentor and mentees.
• Overall support from School management, including providing administrative support.
• Bespoke promotional seminars and case-study examples focussed on range of SVM academic staff profiles.
• Coaching targeted to staff who had never applied for promotion.
Barriers:
• The COVID pandemic caused number of delays to the initiative, core to which were the delays in mentors and mentees meeting, and for mentees to have the time to progress with their individual career progression plans. However, even with the pandemic, we held promotion workshops online via Zoom to maintain momentum.
The future?
While we have had success in using mentoring to foster career development across our staff, we are cognisant that much work remains. For example, only one academic clinician with >50% clinical service has been promoted to the level of professor and none to full professor in the last 35 years, highlighting the difficulty of clinical staff to reach higher grades via promotion.
Hence, as part of our Athena Swan silver action plan we are sustaining our mentoring programme. We will particularly focus on our academic clinical staff and in veterinary nursing to ensure that they are supported to apply for promotion, and that they are aware of the revised UCD development framework where clinical work is more clearly recognised. Furthermore, we will aim to increase the numbers of male faculty taking on the roles of mentors and mentees.
Advice for other members
In our experience, the workshops where faculty gave their personal stories and experience of career progression were powerful ways to showcase how developing your career can be challenging but how mentorship helped them achieve their aims. This in turn helped with mentees ‘buying into’ and sticking with the mentorship programme, which led to the increased numbers of applications for promotions (17) and well as the ultimate success of many of these applicants (14 promotions).
Learn more about Athena Swan Ireland and how it could benefit you and your institution.
